


In paradisum

by sabinelagrande



Category: DCU Animated, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Apocalypse, Episode: s02e19-20 Hereafter, M/M, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-23
Updated: 2008-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He only has two things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In paradisum

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate ending for Hereafter.

The zero-point generator may give him back his powers, but it won't make the time machine work.

After a few years, he loses interest in finishing it, just as Savage had. A few years more, and he loses interest even in his powers themselves.

He can't seem to shake his disappointment, though.

-

He starts reading.

Savage's- he can't bring himself to call him anything else, even now- personal library takes him the better part of six months to even get through; it's almost three years before he can't possibly bring himself to reread any of it. By then, though, Savage has rebuilt a whole fleet of helicopters. Sifting through the ruins of libraries and bookstores keeps him occupied for a decade or so, but by the time he finds an autographed first edition copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, he's more or less bored of it.

-

The first time the subject comes up, he decides he needs some space of his own.

He can't decide whether he's being cowardly or just smart. It's comforting, at any rate, just working with his hands for a while. His place may not be as big or as well appointed as Savage's, but it's something he can call his own.

He finds he can hardly sleep there, though, without the quiet comfort of knowing that someone is nearby. It bothers him that he's gotten so used to it.

-

"The Spectre."

"Recalled."

"The Shade."

"Lying, apparently."

"Grundy."

"He's a tree now, I think. I'm not really sure how all that works."

"The Phantom Stranger."

Savage shrugs. "Just wandered off one day. You know how he was."

-

The real problem is that he's never considered himself to be an immortal before. He knows enough about Krypton to fill the average thimble, and still less about the Kryptonian lifespan, but it's been decades since he got here, and he hasn't even gotten a grey hair. He figures that if he had known, if given a little time to prepare, he would have had a better plan (Savage's seemingly endless methods to amuse himself more or less confirm this suspicion). He didn't know how comforting it was to know that one day it would all end until he was pretty sure that it wouldn't.

He remembers- his memory is still close to perfect; some days it's a curse, sometimes it's a gift- a conversation he had with Bruce and Wally once. Somehow- following the meandering sort of track that conversations with Bruce always took, when Bruce deigned to have them- they ended up on the subject of vampires.

"It seems to me," Wally had said, putting his feet up, "that fighting a vampire is win-win. Either you beat him, or you get turned, and you live to bite another day."

"Vampires don't turn everyone they bite," he had pointed out, having impenetrable skin and thus not much to add to the discussion.

"It's not win-win," Bruce had countered. "It's lose-lose. If he turns you, then you're a slave to your baser instincts, and you have eternity to think about it."

"But what if you beat him?" he had asked.

"Then you know you're living in a world with vampires in it."

This was when he had realized that Bruce had a plan for if Nosferatu suddenly showed up. He probably had it filed in his Bat-Computer under "Nosferatu", cross referenced under "Dracula", "vampire", and "undead". And at the time, the idea of Bruce sitting down in his Cave, still sated from his first kill, very carefully checking off his itemized plans one after the other, had sent him into convulsive laughter.

Now, he only wishes Bruce were here, to tell him exactly what to do in the event of immortality.

-

The second time it comes up, he just pretends he hasn't heard.

-

"You know," Savage says to him over dinner one night, "I never have learned your real name."

He doesn't respond, pushing his vegetables around with his fork.

"It just seems silly at this juncture, the whole secret identity thing," he continues. Savage seems to realize he's not getting anywhere, though, and lets the matter drop.

He wants to explain. He wants Savage to know that telling him will be admitting that he'll never need to keep it secret again. He wants to let him know that it honestly doesn't have anything to do with him. He needs to tell him that, after everything else has been stripped away from him, there are only two things left in the world that are really his- his body and his name.

He can't.

-

They resolve to speak in nothing but Farsi for an entire decade, just to see if they can.

But then Savage can't find a list of profanities anywhere, and he unilaterally calls it off.

-

The third time, he beats the shit out of him.

It just gets to him, sometimes. Sometimes he looks at Savage, and all he can see is the man who ruined everything, the man who murdered everyone he ever cared about. And how dare he, how _dare_ he just sit across the table, smiling at him, as if there will ever be enough time between them and the world as he knew it, as if there will ever be any hope for his redemption, as if he will ever be anything but a monster.

But then sometimes he looks at him, and he sees the only thing that seems to make life worth living.

So he pours everything that twists him up out onto Savage, who takes it without complaint, almost as if he knows how much he needs it.

-

He goes mad for a while, just to see how it feels.

He finds he doesn't care for it.

-

"I won't mention it again," Savage says the fourth time, part graceful defeat, part wounded pride.

He wants to reply, but the words get caught in his throat. His companion- when did he start thinking like that?- gets up from the table with his usual composure, folds his napkin and just walks away.

He stays at the table, holding his head in his hands, trying to make the memories stop coming.

He slips into Savage's room that night, the moonlight from the windows so bright that it almost drains his courage. It's as if the other man has been expecting him- and he probably has been. He feels suddenly that it's now or never- a ridiculous thing to think in these long, unbroken days.

"It's Clark," he says quietly, leaning down to brush his lips against Savage's, and now he's really gone.


End file.
